Call The Midwife

Me, my Mom, and a "Pram"

During my years as a teacher, I did not watch much television other than the ABC morning line up of talk shows I recorded and caught up with when there was time. It's been years since I followed a prime-time series. I think I only watched the first year of Seinfeld before giving up on even that. I was always more in need of sleep than a good laugh at something on the tube.

A few shows were the exception. HGTV kept me well entertained, but it was BBC television that always drew me in. Downton Abbey was reminiscent of Upstairs Downstairs, something I loved to watch with my mom. I finally gave in and binged all the episodes during a summer break. It got me to fall in love with the British all over again and I missed my mom with every season. She would have watched it all with me. Then my daughter, Katie, got me hooked on The Great British Bake-Off, a cooking competition about some chefs with English accents baking biscuits. We can't wait for the next season, even if Mary Berry has gone onto bigger showstopper opportunities.

In my retirement, I am starting to watch the telly again. I have a new Netflix obsession and another BBC series. What is it about British TV that I can't resist? I woke at dawn to watch Prince Harry get married and I have now binged every episode of Call the Midwife over seven seasons. I love sharing all the bits and pieces of the plot with my daughter and her boyfriend, the show's two other biggest fans. How perfectly adorable is Fred Buckle and his Violet? Will Trixie finally beat her alcoholism? What antics will Sister Monica Joan get herself into next? I love these characters, my new television besties.

My brother and me, 1957

My mom gave birth to my brother and me during the 1950's, the same time period of this show. She was proud to say she gave birth to me in a hospital, as those were modern times. She smoked during her pregnancy, something that made me cringe every time women with big bellies on the show lit up their cigarettes. And she was given a drug to induce twilight sleep during her birth. The amnesic drug did not kill the pain, it just induced a narcotic state of disorientation making her forget the entire thing. My mom woke up not remembering the pain or even that she gave birth. It's amazing I survived the pregnancy, the birth, or that I lived beyond a childhood of eating peanut butter and riding a bike without a helmet. Those were modern times?

Valerie, a nurse on Call the Midwife next to a photo of my Mom.
The same time period, the same haircut, and a cunning resemblance.
The accuracy in the show's details is remarkable.

I watch Call the Midwife and I think about my mom. The stories take place in the East End of London, not in Whitestone, Queens, but still, it is sometimes very hard to watch and impossible not to compare. Did we really live through the things they are showing? Was racism as rampant and as fearful as smallpox? Were women so strong as to deliver a baby, yet thought of as the weaker sex with no appreciation for what they can contribute to the world?

Midwifery in the 50's was a skill only women were allowed to participate in and these women were brilliant at successfully delivering the most complicated of births and calming down a frantic new mother with breathing techniques Lamaze classes could only hint at during my own birthing years. I laughed through Lamaze with my other pregnant friend, Pat, and I think we missed some of the finer points of the program. I could have used a caring midwife 'down there' in the delivery room.

I am up to 1963 in the show and this is now my history. I can remember moments from that year and I remember that turbulent decade very well. We have come such a long way from then, but these glorious, strong women portrayed on the show are still being thought of as too weak to have a voice in what really matters, such as their bodies.

Sister Evangelina would have some very harsh words of advice for this country, I am sure.